Updated nVidia drivers, screens blacking out

bathilz, what version of the nVidia drivers are you running on your Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit, 1803 system? If it's not, could you install 398.82 and see if any oddities occur?



The computer stayed alive overnight.

I can see two possibilities, though it's purely anecdotal.
1. I ran DDU last week in safe mode and DIDN'T install anything. When I BOOTED the computer, I WAS NOT limited to the "primary" monitor at 1024x768. Both monitors were functional. I just figured the Windows basic drivers or whatever it was using understood there were two monitors.

This LAST time I ran DDU and didn't install anything, and booted so the system could use whatever the default drivers were, I DID only get the small monitor at 1024x768 and the system wouldn't even DETECT the second monitor. Did something work differently in DDU or did I DO something different?

2. Since it dumped to the black screen in the middle of installing the 378 nVidia drivers and I crashed it, I didn't get several things that normally show up in the control panel installed. All I've got is the "graphics" driver and the audio driver.

I don't know if EITHER of these made a difference, and of course, the system could compost at any moment, but it's not slow on graphics - at least those I need for Lightroom, Photoshop and the like. And it didn't die overnight. I'll see what happens as the day goes on...

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2) Make sure that there is no over clocking while troubleshooting.

One of the first things I did was shut down all the tweaked settings and tell the BIOS to go back to the defaults. The only thing I had to change was to turn on RAID 'cause I'm storing original images on a 4TB RAID 0 array.

3) Sometimes there are problems in the bios that produce bsod.

It's not a BSOD. The system is alive. The disks are active. The only thing that's happening is that dwm is gone and I have no screens. I suspect that if I didn’t need to SEE what I was doing, I could probably shut it down normally instead of crashing it.


The BIOS: BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 2001, 9/30/2015
4) Please check to see if this is the most up to date version.
No, the version on there is not current, but there has never been an issue until the driver installation. I’ve learned over time NOT to mess with the BIOS unless there’s some specific issue it addresses that’s needed. If you believe updating the BIOS to 3802 is worth the risk, I'll install the most current NON-beta version.

5) Open the website for the computer or motherboard manufacturer to view the drivers and post a URL or hyperlink into the thread.
X99-DELUXE Driver & Tools | Motherboards | ASUS USA

Again, as with the BIOS, there are most likely some drivers I have NOT updated – I generally figure that when installing updates there are THREE things that can happen:
They’ll make the problem worse
They’ll create entirely new problems
They’ll fix the problem you may not have known you had, hopefully without causing new problems…

OTHER than the stupidity with the nVidia driver, I generally TRY not to mess with things that aren’t broke.
In THIS CASE, since pretty much everything IS now broke, I guess I’ve got nothing to lose and might as well update the BIOS and all the other stuff from Asus. Worst case, I brick the system, which is a good excuse to build a new one…

6) To ensure that there are no improper bios settings please reset the bios.
Did that - the X99 has a "clear cmos" button so I presume that's resetting the BIOS?

7) Sometimes there can be failure to boot after resetting the bios.
8) Backup the computer files to another drive or to the cloud.
EVERYTHING on this box is backed up onto TWO 6TB hard drives. One is in the fireproof safe sitting to my right. The other is offsite.

9) Make sure the Macrium image is up to date:
Macrium runs every day. On Monday it makes a full backup, then incrementals for the rest of the week. I currently have full weeks of backups going back at LEAST 3 weeks on hard drives that are NOT in this box.

I've considered reloading a 2-3 week old, PRIOR to the 398 nVidia installation, to see if the problem gets better. I don't RECALL having black screens several weeks ago, but things here are a little chaotic right now, and will be for several upcoming months, so I haven’t always been as attentive to what the computer is doing as I normally am.

10) And please create a brand new restore point.
Done.

How to Clear Your Computers CMOS to Reset BIOS Settings:
https://www.howtogeek.com/131623/how...bios-settings/
3 Ways to Reset Your BIOS - wikiHow:
3 Ways to Reset Your BIOS - wikiHow
I hit the little red button that says it clears the CMOS


11) Open Ccleaner > click windows tab > scroll down to system and advanced > post an image into the thread

I've got CCleaner Free, and run it regularly, and I can scroll down to system and advanced, but I'm not sure what image I should be posting. Here's the screen I'm seeing:




12) In the left lower corner search type: system or system control > open system control panel > on the left pane click advanced system settings
a) > on the advanced tab under startup and recovery > click settings > post an image of the startup and recovery into the thread.
b) > on the advanced tab under performance > click on settings > under performance options > click on the advanced tab > under virtual memory > click on change > post an image of the virtual memory tab into the thread
I opened the control panel (it took a LONG time to figure out what I was supposed to be doing since I’ve never gone through all those steps – it’s an icon on the desktop.
Here are the images:



System is still up and I’ve been using it for the last 90 minutes. I’ll try to get all the Asus stuff updated then see if I can get the beta logger to work again.

1) For Ccleaner uncheck:
a) Memory Dumps
b) Windows Log Files
c) Windows Error Reporting
d) Windows Event Logs

2) For Virtual Memory:
a) check the box to Automatically manage paging file size for all drives
b) move the dot from custom size to system managed size
c) reboot

3) For startup and recovery system failure:
a) uncheck automatically restart
b) reboot

4) It is easy to miss BSOD if automatically restart is checked and this is the default setting.
With automatically restart unchecked you should see a BSOD window with bugcheck and : (
Sometimes you may see a misbehaving driver in the form *.sys
If you see the very beginning of a BSOD crash there is a % counter.
Allow the % counter to rise to 100% so that there is sufficient time to create the dump files.

5) During the troubleshooting process please maintain these settings.
These settings are to optimize the formation of dump files if there are bsod.
And these settings are to optimize the creation of files used for troubleshooting.
These settings are also to not clean the files used in troubleshooting.
After the troubleshooting has completed the settings can be remodified.

6) Make sure that these updates are installed:

a) Version 1.05.14
2018/01/25146.47 MBytes
Dual Intelligent Processors 5
Fix compatibility issue with the latest Windows updates.

b) The Asus website displayed 8 non beta BIOS updates after the current 2001 version:
2102 > 3004 > 3101 > 3301 > 3401 > 3505 > 3701 > 3802

Some of the BIOS upgrades displayed:

Improve system compatibility
Improve system stability
Improve System Performance.

Please upgrade to the latest non-beta version.

OK, I'm not NORMALLY flamingly incompetent, but this thing is making me think I should go find a cave somewhere to live in........

Reset the CMOS. Again. Updated the BIOS to 3802. Or at least TRIED to update it to 3802. Eventually using the EZ Update I got it to INSTALL to the point where the box SAYS it's on 3802... And I just finally got the thing to boot into Windows. There are NO disks connected in the box - the only thing left is the SSD with the operating system. I can't do RAID at all, and Windows won't even run the Disk Management. I can't even do a clean shutdown 'cause it never displays the shutdown text or display the shutdown options.

So, I didn't brick the thing, but it's close!

Do I go back to 2101 as ThrashZone recommended? 'Cause right now this thing is closer to being a door stop than being a productive system - and that's not even COUNTING that it may turn black and sit like a stump any second.

zbook, before I start playing with all the stuff in your post, do I need to EITHER go forward to the 3902 beta BIOS or BACK to the 2101 BIOS as ThrashZone indicated? Even though it may not be shiny and new like 3802 or 3902, if I can find 2101, I think I may go that way, 'cause I don't know what spectre even is and my X99 is, if I recall correctly, a haswell-e running a 5820...

OH, and I don't look ANYTHING like the guy in the picture! I don't HAVE any hair left and he still has fingernails!!!!!!!!

If you are more comfortable with the old bios and can revert then do that.
The other steps can then be done and if there are problem you can then update the BIOS every other or every third version rather than the bigger jump.
With the computer/motherboard manufacturer displaying:
Improve system compatibility
Improve system stability
Improve System Performance.
it would seem that compatibility, stability, and performance should improve.
At this time though there could be many factors.
So work on the others and then come back to this one.

Hi,
As the youtube video shows us being penalized for not running the newest bios beta or not like I said x99 is eol

Bios flash back wise I've always found it works out best to flash back 2 versions past where you want to eventually be too
Flash back to 1801 and then flash to 2101 as an example :)

Raid should of been remove before bios flashing all would of been best starting from optimized defaults and then flash forward or backwards
Try the beta bios it can't hurt at this point
Neither can trying the issue with the prior os like win-7 or 8 where controlling which updates get installed is a lot easier

I hesitate to suggest this, but do you have any spare drives, SSD or spinner, with which you could experiment with a clean install (without wiping your OS disk)?

Alternately, you could image the OS disk, and then run a clean install on it knowing that you could restore it from the image later. You do have drive imaging hardware and software, right?

If the clean install runs OK, that'd be one way to tell whether you have a hardware or Windows issue.

My #2 system is running on an Asrock X99 motherboard. I recently updated the BIOS (spectre patches). Works fine. I believe that it's still at Win10 X64 Pro 17134.191, though.

(The System File Checker has never done anything for me as a diagnostic tool.)

Thanks for the replies.. It turns out the domestic associate is NOT enamored of the idea of a "dank, smelly cave with a dirt floor, and don't even THINK about letting that wolf in here". So, I guess my plan to de-technology myself isn't going to happen...

It APPEARS to be "stable" again. I didn't do ANYTHING interesting in the BIOS, just told it what the system is used for, turned on hot swap for the ports that have removable drives, and made sure everything was AHCI instead of RAID. I'm still on 3802, and it continued to be, VERY VERY (add more "verys") unhappy with the RAID arrays. I stripped it down to ONLY the O/S SSD. Then I added in the "normal" HDD, and finally the first RAID - and it instantly puked all over itself. If it DID boot, the system came up comatose and unusable. So at midnight last night the RAID arrays got replaced with large, single drives for the images and derivatives.

I'm now running with a 1TB SSD for the O/S, catalogs, applications, cache, temp and such, and a pair of 8TB HGST drives for images and all their derivatives. Backups will be made using the hot swap drive bays so I can switch backups as needed (usually weekly). This is NOT a bad thing 'cause even though I didn't dislike the RAID arrays, they've always been a little more fiddly than just having a single drive.

The system has been up since midnight when it finally settled down, and it seems to boot without any drama. And, with my not-complete set of nVidia drivers from version 378 I haven't gotten a black screen. I don't think I'll ever willingly change graphics drivers again!

SO, I'll make the suggested changes, see if I can get the beta data logger to work, and give some thought to going to 3902 (I'll go out and look to see how many people are screaming that the update is causing some sort of problem).

bobkn, yes, if things get to that point, I can pop in a 1 or 2 TB HDD (I have spares that were in the RAID arrays) and either restore a Macrium Reflect backup OR install from scratch. The problem is I wouldn't know if it really worked 'til I got all the software on that I use to beat the thing up, which generally takes about 4 days. The advantage of installing clean is I get rid of all the artifacts, gunk, old whatever, and other garbage accumulated over the last couple years.

I'll get the new drives populated from the nightly Syncback backups and see how things go.

Same issue since 2 or 3 weeks

On win7 64bit black screen (sometimes - 10 times in a second error 4101 in system log) - also BSOD on this issue!

Updated to win10 64bit same issue BUT no BSOD and blackouts duration are very short

It happens frequently when i open firefox

Downgrade (clean uninstall with DDU v17.0.8.6) to an older drivers did not help

a tip in another forum/site was to renew the heat-conducting paste thats what i have done 5 minutes ago

results later...

Box is still running.

Takes a while to copy several TB of stuff. I can't imagine trying to do this from the cloud........

Anyhow, the only recent error I'm seeing (at the moment) is the IAStorDataMgrSve.exe crashed a couple times. Since I'm not running RAID any more, WHY do I need the Intel Rapid Storage stuff? I've read it makes "normal" systems faster and it doesn't do a THING for normal systems. And that you get absolutely NO gain using instead of the regular MS SATA drivers...

So, DO I want this software running or do I get rid of it and replace it with a MS or some other "normal" SATA driver?